Executive Summary

Several sections are included in this business proposal. In the first section, brief

description of URS Corporation and Australia LTD will be conducted. Secondly,

PEST, Porter five forces, client, competitor and root cause analysis will be provided.

Lastly, marketing approaches of URS Corporation and Australia LTD and marketing

recommendations will be discussed. From analyses, URS Corporation and Australia

LTD have a great position in this industry but lack of marketing power. An integrated

marketing strategy is recommended by applying interactive communication tools.

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Company profile

URS Australia Limited is a professional consulting firm, which provides engineering,

construction and technical services within Australia. The range of their clients

includes governments (Federal, state, and local) and private sector companies. They

have a wide range of expertises from environment and engineering to business and

communities within Australia. URS Australia is a wholly owned subsidiary of the

parent company URS Corporation, a US public company listed on the New York

Stock Exchange.

URS Corporation’s oldest predecessor company was founded in 1904. URS

Corporation incorporated in 1957 as Broadview Research-a research group active in

the area of physical and engineering sciences. From 1970s to 2007, USR continued

to expand their business through acquisitions to enhance their engineering,

architectural and environmental practices.

URS’s key business market sectors are Federal/National Governments,

Infrastructure, Power, and Industrial & Commercial. The U.S. federal government,

national governments of other countries, state and local government agencies are

their major clients in the United States and internationally, and also fortune 500

companies and other multinational corporations. (URS Corporation, 2010)

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Marketing for consulting firms

Why marketing a consulting firm is different and difficult?

Marketing for a consulting firm is totally different from other industries which

have solid products. They sell their services or specialised technical skills, which

depends on how credible and cost-effective their services to their clients. That is,

services need to be experienced to prove their quality. But for consulting firms,

their services comprise a wide range of specialised skills and human capitals to

complete projects. Thus, “trial” projects cannot be provided as product testers for

customers, to prove the quality of their services. Other marketing approaches,

which focus on client relationships, are needed.

Client-centred marketing model

Chan, P.(1992) proposed a client-centred marketing model for market

professional services. In this client-centred marketing model, four major

elements, performance, referrals, targets and promotion, are included.

Performance depends on their financial conditions, existing clients, existing

markets, and existing services. Referrals source can come from present and

past clients or other contacts from consultant’s networks. Targets of influence

and opportunity are those clients who desire consultant’s services or non-

competing professionals who serve the consultant’s prospective clients.

Promotion includes personal and non-personal basis selling. After understanding

this model, consulting firm can come up a strategic marketing plan. Firstly,

service analysis and identifying your targets (markets and clients) are needed.

Secondly, reach your targets by promotion. Personal basis promotion can be

working past or existing clients by phone and friendly letters, joining professional

memberships, sending client-centred Action letters, and attending public

speaking and seminars.

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For non-personal basis promotion, publishing (newsletters, books, magazines

articles, etc.) is a good way to build reputation, establish credentials, create

favourable impressions and generate enquiries related to their projects. Other

promotion method, such as regularly newsletter published, publicity, direct mail

advertising, firm information brochures.

Integrated marketing communication (IMC)

Seven themes of IMC applied on to professional services firms, including

communication, branding, relationship management, cross functional planning,

integration, synergy and market orientation, are discussed.(Moffatt et al., 2007)

Marketing communication, which provides the only evidence of firms’

representativeness, is the most influence with new clients, comparing to

advertising. Public relations work considerably powerful by illustrating one’s

competence (speeches, seminars and articles) than which assert it (brochures,

direct mail and cold calls). On the other hand, this tactics should focus on face-

to-face conversation individually rather than broadcasting a general idea to a

mass audience. Another important thing in PSF’s marketing is relationship

management, depending on the proper management before, during, and after

the project encounter.(Filiatrault & Lapierre, 1997) That is, both suggestions from

clients before the projects and feedback from clients during and after the project

are important.

Bring marketing culture for PSF

For PSF, professionals like engineers and technical staff are assets of consulting

firms, they provide services as their company’s “products”. Thus, bringing

marketing culture into the company by training their engineers and technical staff

is a key point when developing a marketing strategy for a consulting firm.(Teoh,

2008)

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URS situation, environment and market analysis

In order to find out a better marketing strategy for URS, analyses focus on

situation of industry, company, clients, competitor and their existing marketing

strategy will be provided in this section.

PEST analysis

Political

Australia has been ranked as the third in the world Political stability in the IMD

World competitiveness Yearbook 2010, it’s a safe investment location. (NSW

Government. 2010a).

Latest Work Fair Australia (WFA) legislation- new safety net for employees-

minimum wages and maximum working hour per week. (Stewart, A. 2009)

Economic

Australia has performed remarkable well in 2009 despite of financial turmoil from

the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Growth to accelerate to 4 % through 2010

from Westpac’s forecast (Westpac, 2009)

Lending to the construction of new dwellings jumped 70% over the year to

August from Westpac’s forecast (Westpac, 2009)

Public investment growth (Westpac, 2009)

Outsourcing non-core functions to professional services tends to increase.

Knowledge outsourcing is expected to grow to more than $17 billion in sales by

2010, according to Evalueserve, a business and financial research company

(Mukherjee, 2007)

Social

Australia government and society care about environment issues than lots of

countries in the world. Environmental issued are dressed at the national and

state levels of Australia, and local government. 2010 environmental performance

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index ranked Australia eight in the world, which includes the impact of water and

air pollution on humans and the environmental burden of disease.(NSW

Government. 2010b)

The aging population keep increasing. According to Australian Government ICT

Sustainability Plan 2010 – 2015, the number of aged 65 and over’s Australians is

predicted to increase dramatically, from around 2.5 million in 2002 to 6.2 million

in 2042.( Australian Government. 2010)

Highest ethical standards play an important role in consulting industry

Technological

Intra-office forums improvement (URS Corporation Asia Pacific. 2009)

Fast speed and higher broadband penetration (Euromonitor International. 2010)

From PEST analysis, political factors should provide evidence for company to

invest in Australia, even fair work regulations may involve more costs to maintain

wages margin. Economic factors reveal a great opportunities for URS Australia

because of increasing of house construction and public investment, directly relating

to its services. Additionally, environmental, health and safety issues become more

important in Australia, which directly related to its core business. From technological

perspective, Internet infrastructure and speed can be provided more opportunities for

marketing and knowledge sharing across the region.

Porter five forces analysis

T he entry of new competitors

Entry barrier is high, emphasis on experiences and reputation, also due to

minimal capital requirements and benefit of scale.

URS Ranked #2 Overall and as one of the Top 3 Firms for more than a decade

on ENR (Engineering-news records) which creates barriers to entry to new

competitor in the engineering consulting industry.

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URS focus on providing excellent services and cut down transaction costs for

clients create barriers to entry from new competitors

The intensity of competitive rivalry

According to consultant Australia, about 16,600 engineering firms in this industry.

660 firms employed more than 20 people.( Consult Australia. 2007)

From reputation perspective, main competitor: AECOM (Ranked #1 on 2010 top

500 Design firms engineering news-records)

The threat of substitute services

Low threat of substitute services in engineering consulting industry

The bargaining power of clients

Clients tend to be relatively concentrated depending on familiarity of the firms

Switching cost to other services provider is higher

URS provides lots of industry information through media release and publishing

to decrease bargaining power

URS provides a wide range of different skills to decrease the power

The bargaining power of suppliers

Significant suppliers to engineering consulting firm are employees. URS

supports project management certification and ongoing education for reducing

bargaining power. (URS Corporation Asia Pacific. 2009b)

URS provides certification of the URS Health and Safety Management System to

ensure their labours’ safety (URS Corporation Asia Pacific. 2009)

From porter five forces analysis, URS Corporation and its direct subsidiary in

Australia has a great position in this industry. Due to the increasing of

competitiveness, URS corporation and URS Australia LTD still have to concrete their

relationship with existing clients and expand potential clients by providing cost-

effective services to keep increasing their competitive advantages.

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Clients analysis

The combination of URS’s Clients URS has diversified their business into four

key markets sectors- federal, infrastructure, power, and industrial and commercial.

They provide service for every stage of a project from program planning to operations

and maintenance. As shown in Fig.1, the project revenue from Federal government

accounts for 45%, industrial & commercial and infrastructure respectively account for

22% and 18%. (URS Corporation Asia Pacific. 2009c).

Fig.1 revenue by market sector (Sources: URS corporation annual report)

Based on analyses above, URS can expand their business into industrial &

commercial and infrastructure due to outsourcing management increase. From

marketing perspective, URS can consider to establish different professional images

through media to gain more opportunities to diversity their services.

Existing marketing approaches of URS corporation and Australia LTD

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Publishing and Media release shows their professional services

Through publishing and news release from URS Corporation and Australia LTD’s

websites, their past and potential clients can gain access to their pervious project

information, their papers and presentation on special issues, and their awards.

Get Clients feedback from projects

URS Australia successfully achieved 95% overall clients satisfaction. But the client

feedback only from less than 20% of project closed (203 projects). Thus, the

sampling of client feedback is not enough to represent Client’s responses. (URS

Corporation Asia Pacific. 2009c)

Professional’s rewards announcement and training

URS tried to market their services from their qualified professionals and provide

training for their staff. (for example, RogenSi Managing and Developing Client

Relationships program)

Focus on their values to market their services

I ssues from their marketing approaches

Three issues are recognised:

1. Not enough client feedback

2. Slow client complaints responses

3. Passive marketing approaches

Root Cause analysis from issues

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Fig.2 Root cause analysis for issues 1

Fig.3 Root cause analysis for issues 2

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Fig.4 Root cause analysis for issues 3

Competitor analysis-marketing approaches learn from AECOM

AECOM is a one of the largest engineering and management support consulting

firms in the world. They have been ranked #1 n 2010 top 500 Design firms

engineering news-records. (AECOM, 2010) From marketing perspectives, they

provided not only client-centred marketing strategy for their company, but also taking

advantage of improve of innovative technology and internet freebie tools to market

their business. Compared to AECOM, some different marketing approach can be

learned from AECOM to improve URS’s marketing approaches.

Transparent and detailed professional profile

AECOM put their detailed profiles of management team on their website to set

up their professional images by marketing their professional services.

I nteractive communication with their clients

AECOM tried to use more interactive way to communicate with their clients.

They have their own YouTube channels to show how their professionals work with

projects. Additionally, Twitter and Email alerts system help them to update their news

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to their clients regularly.

From above analyses, URS need to change their marketing communication

way by integrating different their existing own resources without involving in too much

extra costs.

Recommendations for URS marketing strategy-differentiated

Driving marketing culture with their executive plan to train their professionals

to market themselves

Increase Client feedback surveys

Build a more interactive client communication system to maintain and

expand client relationships

Internet freebie: twitter, YouTube, Blog, and so on.

Official website reconstruction

Identify and build their own brand images

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References

URS Corporation. (2010). About URS history. Available:

http://www.ap.urscorp.com/AboutURS/History/. Last accessed 13 Oct 2010

Chan, P. (1992). How to Market Your Professional Services: A Strategic Approach.

Journal of Management decision 30 (7), p46-53.

Moffatt, Jennifer J. and Luck, Edwina M. (2007) The Relevant of IMC to Professional

Service Firms. In Proceedings 2007 Australia and New Zealand Marketing Academy

Conference(ANZMAC), p1575-1583

Filiatrault, P. Lapierre, J. (1997), Managing Business-to-Business Service Marketing

Relationship. Industrial Marketing Management, vol. 26, 213-222.

Teoh, C. (2008). Engineering a marketing culture. PSF Journal. Issue 1 (14), p12-15.

NSW Government. (2010a). Political Stability. Available:

http://www.business.nsw.gov.au/aboutnsw/climate/A9_riskofpolinstabil.htm. Last

accessed 13 Oct 2010.

Stewart, A. (2009). Labour Law Supplement December 2009-The Fair Work

Legislation. Available: 1.

http://www.federationpress.com.au/pdf/FairWorkLegislationDec2009.pdf. Last

accessed 13 Oct 2010.

Westpac. (2009). Economic outlook: upbeat for Australia. Available:

http://www.westpac.com.au/docs/pdf/bb/Australian_economy.pdf. Last accessed 13

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Oct 2010.

Mukherjee, A.(2007). Viewpoint: outsourcing for knowledge. International Herald

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NSW Government. (2010b). Environment. Available:

http://www.business.nsw.gov.au/aboutnsw/lifestyle/environment.htm. Last accessed

13 Oct 2010.

Australian Government. (2010). the economic implications of an ageing population.

Available:

http://demographics.treasury.gov.au/content/_download/australias_demographic_chal

lenges/html/adc-

URS Corporation Asia Pacific. (2009). Australian Things We Value Report 2009.

Available: http://www.ap.urscorp.com/MediaCentre/Publications/Reports/. Last

accessed 13 Oct 2010.

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2010

Consult Australia. (2007). The Consulting Engineering Industry. Available:

http://www.consultaustralia.com.au/content/default.aspx?ID=56. Last accessed 13

Oct 2010.

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URS Corporation Asia Pacific. (2009b). Why URS?. Available:

http://www.ap.urscorp.com/Careers/WhyURS/. Last accessed 13 Oct 2010.

URS Corporation Asia Pacific. (2009c). URS annual report 2009. Available:

http://www.ap.urscorp.com/MediaCentre/Publications/Reports/. Last accessed 13 Oct

2010.

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